Archipelagic English

Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707

John Kerrigan

Shows the significance of a whole series of seventeenth-century Welsh, Scottish, and Irish writers

Provides new readings of canonical texts from Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, and others

Shows literary-historical interdisciplinarity at its best

Archipelagic English

Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707

John Kerrigan

Description

Seventeenth-century 'English Literature' has long been thought about in narrowly English terms. Archipelagic English corrects this by devolving anglophone writing, showing how much remarkable work was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and national groups around the British-Irish archipelago. This book transforms our understanding of canonical texts from Macbeth to Defoe's Colonel Jack, but it also shows the significance of a whole series of authors (from William Drummond in Scotland to the Earl of Orrery in County Cork) who were prominent during their lifetimes but who have since become neglected because they do not
fit the Anglocentric paradigm. With its European and imperial dimensions, and its close attention to the cultural make-up of early modern Britain and Ireland, Archipelagic English authoritatively engages with, questions, and develops the claim now made by historians that the crises of the seventeenth century stem from the instabilities of a state-system which, between 1603 and 1707, was multiple, mixed, and inclined to let local quarrels spiral into all-consuming conflict. This is a major, interdisciplinary contribution to literary and historical scholarship which is also set to influence present-day arguments about devolution, unionism, and nationalism in Britain and Ireland.

Archipelagic English

Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707

John Kerrigan

Table of Contents

PrefaceList of illustrations1. Introduction2. Archipelagic Macbeth3. The Romans in Britain: Wales and Jacobean Drama4. William Drummond and the British Problem5. Religion and the Drama of Caroline Ireland6. God in Wales: Morgan Llwyd, Henry Vaughan, Katherine Philips7. The Archipelago Enlarged: Milton and Marvell to 16608. Orrery's Ireland9. Our Scotland: Marvell, Mackenzie, Cleland10. The Derry School of Drama11. Defoe, Scotland, and Union12. Epilogue: 1707 and All ThatPrimary Sources

Archipelagic English

Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707

John Kerrigan

Author Information

John Kerrigan was born and brought up in Liverpool, educated at Oxford, and now teaches at Cambridge. He has published extensively on early modern literature, especially Shakespeare, on Romantic poetry, and on contemporary writing. His edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint (1986, often reprinted) was widely acclaimed, and his study of Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon (1996) won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. In addition to editions and monographs, he has written numerous articles for the (London) Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, and poetry reviews for 'little' magazines. Internationally prominent, he has lectured throughout Britain, Ireland, Europe and North America.

Archipelagic English

Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707

John Kerrigan

Reviews and Awards

"John Kerrigan consistently stimulates new insights about the past and present." --Studies in English Literature

"[Kerrigan's] readings are exacting and Kerrigan-like in their deliciously delicate ironies, and in their profound sensibility for the nuances of syntax and diction." --Milton Quarterly